S. G. MALATESTA / V. CIRILLI
(Virtutim s.r.l.s., La Tuscia University, Italy)
Keywords: Trajan Column, leap motion, archaeological disclosure, hypermìedia contents
Abstract:
Communicating archaeology to a non-specialist audience: this is the challenge the project HyperColumna want to perform. In a world increasingly crowded with information, the only truly limited resource is attention, which tends to capture only those experiences that are interesting and pleasant. The HyperColumna Project comes from a different conception of creating disclosure: it does not consider the user to be a passive recipient of the cultural message, but instead wants to involve him in a process of knowledge personalized and free of constraints. To achieve this goal, the project combines to a hypermedia content platform the potential of information technology, inspired by the frieze of Trajan’s Column: HyperColumna makes immediately visible and livable the relationships between monuments, characters, historical events and places depicted in the very long bas-relief, connecting them with their reality and multiple contexts. In other words, it’s a new approach to the cultural visualization and disclosure through user experience.
Within the installation at the Trajan’s Markets – Imperial For a Museum, in collaboration with the University of Arkansas Rome Center, a demonstration version of the system is hosted, which also innovates the approach to the information technology interface access using the Leap Motion® technologies, that permits to control the digital interface with the only use of the hands. HyperColumna gives back to the Trajan’s Column all its original communicative value, making it also a key to spatial and chronological access: through it, the visitor will be led to look with different eyes the surrounding archaeological heritage in its entirety, no more silent witness of bygone eras, but part of a wider and articulated question that comes to embrace also his present. Finally yet importantly, the technological format can be easily exported to other cultural heritage contexts.